Matt Gurney on the sad case of Etan Patz and the wrongfully accused pedophile

The sad case of Etan Patz, and the pedophile who always insisted he didn't kill him

Police in New York City have charged a man with the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, a mystery 33 years (at least) in the making. Pedro Hernandez, 51, of Maple Shade, N.J., was picked up by police on Thursday and gave a full, signed confession several hours later. His decision to confess to Patz’s murder has been described as remorseful, and while police have not yet released much information about their discussions with Hernandez, they have said that his confession included specific details that lead them to believe that he is indeed the killer.

There has been false hope before in this sad case. But Hernandez is the first person to be charged with Patz’s disappearance. If he is convicted, this will come as a relief to Patz’s parents, who live in the same apartment they did 33 years ago, always having hoped their son would one day find his way back. It would also be a victory for the New York Police Department, who have periodically returned to the case over the intervening decades.

And it would be, strangely, also a victory for Jose Antonio Ramos, a confessed child sex predator who was, in many ways, the perfect suspect, even going so far as to admit kidnapping a boy who fit Patz’s description on the day he vanished. But who always insisted he hadn’t killed the boy, even after the police brought all possible pressure against him.

Patz disappeared on May 25, 1979. The school buses in his neighbourhood, the-then seedy (but slowly improving) New York City area of SoHo, had been on strike, but the strike was over. Patz, six, begged his parents to walk alone just up the street to where the bus would pick him up, like a big boy. His flustered parents, both running late, agreed, and his mother took him down to the street in front of their apartment. She watched him walk to the intersection corner, from there only 150 feet to the bus stop. She never saw him again.

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Through a series of miscues, it was hours before anyone at the school, Patz household or in the neighbourhood realized that Patz was missing. Officers set up a command post and waited for a ransom call. None came. Nor was any trace of Patz found. The last witnesses to have confirmed sightings of Patz had him at the same intersection his mother had last seen him at. Past that, it was if he had vanished into thin air.

The investigation went cold. Patz’s face was plastered all over the city and milk cartons, to no avail. Then, in 1982, three years after Patz vanished, there was an apparent break. Two young boys in New York City went to police and reported that a strange man had tried to lure them into a storm drain. Police found Jose Ramos, a mentally disturbed drifter with known sexual attraction to young boys. Inside the drain, where Ramos was living, police found photos of young, light-haired boys — similar to Patz.

Ramos was questioned about Patz’s disappearance, and denied involvement. He freely told police that he had been mentally ill in 1979, struggling to control dark, violent urges. He also surprised police by acknowledging knowing Patz, at least from afar — during the school bus strike that had ended right before he disappeared, Patz had been walked to a city bus stop every day by a friend of the family. At the time of Patz’s disappearance, this woman had been dating Ramos, though she later found out his interest was actually in her young son, whom he molested several times. She refused to press charges, and police had to let Ramos go.

Three years later, after the case passed to a new investigator, Ramos was called back for more interviews. He was serving time in Pennsylvania for child molestation, and when asked by the NYPD detectives if he had also sexually abused Patz, Ramos became upset and agreed to “tell them everything.” According to Ramos’ new version of events, on the day Patz disappeared, Ramos had lured a young boy matching Patz’s description back to his apartment for sex. But, Ramos told, the boy wasn’t interested, and Ramos did not force sex upon the boy (this was consistent with his other known episodes of abuse, which did not involve violence either during or after the sex). Ramos said he walked the young boy to a nearby subway station, and the boy assured him he could get to an aunt’s house from there. And that, he claimed, was that.

Ramos stuck to this story for years. Police tried everything they could think of to convince him to confess to Patz’s abduction and killing. They thoroughly investigated his background, finding nothing helpful, and spoke with jailhouse informants, who confirmed that Ramos had discussed Patz behind bars, but said nothing he hadn’t to police. New York officers even went so far as to track down a boy that they believed Ramos had molested as a child, so that they could launch a new trial against him and try to use the threat of more time in custody as leverage. The boy confirmed that Ramos had molested him, but Ramos simply pleaded guilty to the new charges and said nothing more about Patz.

But police and Patz’s family were convinced that they had their man. In 2004, the family launched — and won — a wrongful death civil suit against Ramos, and were awarded $2-million (which they obviously will never collect). Every year, on the anniversary of his son’s disappearance, Patz’s father has mailed Ramos a photo of his son, with “What have you done with my little boy?” written on the back. Ramos has remained firm in admitting to taking a boy that day, who may have been Patz, but letting him go unharmed.

Now that Hernandez has been arrested, Ramos may be in the clear. Hernandez was 18 when Patz disappeared, and worked in the basement of a shop in the neighbhourhood, close to Patz’s route. He claims that he lured Patz to the basement and choked him to death, for reasons he can’t explain. He then threw a bag containing Patz’s remains into a heap of other trash bags on the street, which was unusually large — it was Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., and city workers were dealing with typically bloated trash bag counts. Hernandez says the body with Patz’s remains was picked up, without raising any suspicion, with the rest.

Hernandez himself suddenly left New York within days of the disappearance, and over the next few years, confided in relatives that he had done something terrible — murder of a child — before leaving. It was one of these relatives who reportedly contacted police recently, prompted by media coverage of a renewed search in SoHo for Patz’s buried body (a basement was excavated last month, but nothing was found).

It remains to be seen whether any charges will successfully be brought against Hernandez. Without any substantiating evidence, and with no body or forensics, building a case against him will be challenging. But if he is indeed found guilty, it will be both good and humbling news for Patz’s family and investigators, who have spent years pressuring and suing Ramos, a despicable man who seems to have been telling the truth almost this whole time. Patz’s father, according to local media reports, is “taken aback” to discover that someone else has been arrested, someone with no relation to Ramos. That feeling no doubt applies to all who had concluded, with good reason, that Jose Ramos was the killer of poor Etan Patz.